How to raise your credit score 100 points in 12 months

FICO doesn't tell you exactly how it calculates your score, but the broad weightings are public and stable.

Payment history (35% of score). Are you paying every bill on time? A single 30-day late payment can drop your score by 60 to 100 points. This is the biggest single factor.

Amounts owed / credit utilisation (30%). What percentage of your available revolving credit are you using? Below 30% is good. Below 10% is ideal. Above 70% is severely damaging.

Length of credit history (15%). How long have your accounts been open? The age of your oldest account, newest account, and average account age all factor in.

New credit (10%). How many recent hard inquiries and new accounts? Multiple new accounts in a short window suggests financial stress to scoring models.

Credit mix (10%). Do you have both revolving (cards) and installment (loans, mortgages)? Diversity helps slightly.

The biggest lever is the combination of payment history and utilisation, which together are 65% of your score. Optimising those two factors is the entire game.

The fastest way to raise your score is to drop your credit utilisation. This works because utilisation is recalculated every month when each card reports to the bureaus.

If you have $15,000 in available card credit and $9,000 in balances, your utilisation is 60%. Paying $4,500 down to a $4,500 balance drops utilisation to 30%, which can raise your score by 30 to 60 points within 30 to 60 days.

Pay the cards with the highest utilisation ratio first, not the highest APR or highest balance. A card maxed at 100% utilisation hurts your score more than a card at 30% utilisation, even if the maxed card has a smaller balance.

Utilisation matters per-card AND in aggregate. Lenders look at both. Spreading $3,000 across three $5,000-limit cards (20% utilisation each, 20% aggregate) scores better than concentrating $3,000 on one $5,000-limit card (60% utilisation that card, 20% aggregate).

About 1 in 4 consumers have at least one error on their credit report (CFPB and FTC studies). Common errors: accounts listed twice, accounts that aren't yours, payment statuses incorrectly marked as late, balances that don't match reality, collections past their 7-year removal date.

Pull your reports from all three bureaus (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion) at AnnualCreditReport.com (free, federally authorised). Review every account.

For each error: file a dispute with the bureau via their online portal. The bureau has 30 days to investigate. If the creditor can't verify the disputed item, the bureau must remove it. Removing a single legitimate negative item can produce a 20 to 60 point increase.

Payment history is 35% of your score and the recovery curve is steep. Each on-time payment month builds the recent-payment-history portion of your file. After 6 months of perfect payments, lenders see you as a different risk than the borrower you were before.

Set up autopay for the minimum on every credit account. This makes a missed payment impossible. Pay the rest manually so you can control the utilisation reported at month-end.

Don't apply for new credit during this window. Each hard inquiry costs 3 to 7 points temporarily, and new accounts lower your average account age. Save credit applications for when you specifically need them.

Closing old credit cards. Closing reduces your total available credit and lowers average account age. Both hurt the score. The right move is usually to leave old cards open with a small recurring charge (Netflix subscription, paid in full each month) to keep them active.

Applying for store cards at the register for a 10% discount. Each one is a hard inquiry plus a new account. The 10% saved is rarely worth the credit damage.

Maxing out a credit card right before a big purchase like a car. Lenders pull credit at application. A maxed-out card the day before a car loan application can mean an APR several points higher than what your underlying credit profile would otherwise earn.